The Athletic article that came out from last night mentioned a lot of things I agree about the public's opinion of Willy, but one thing that stood out to me.
Now I am a Willy supporter, but that doesn't blind me from knowing when he needs to be better. And leading up to being benched and called out, ya, he needed to be a lot better.
That being said, the line from the article that stood out was something like "Nylander giving away the puck draws more ire than a similar turnover by Marner".
I understand that with what Willy is paid, he is expected to contribute in many ways, or if he can't, he needs to be elite at what he is best at. But the above to me is classic whipping boy example, but almost more to an extreme.
Kind of like when they say you can't fire the players, so you fire the coach. It is an easier and more efficient way out. Well, it is also easy to blame Willy, rather than blame a handful of players or an entire team effort.
Does he make himself an easy target in terms of blame with his play sometimes? Absolutely. But it has become more than that. Instead of the easy target, he's become an automatic target. Whether he is the easiest to blame, the first one to come to mind or a target through groupthink. Let's blame Willy for X,Y and Z, even if only X was his fault (or in some cases, none was his fault but I dislike the player so much that I'll just resort to it).
He needs to be better, he needs to take a lot of responsibility based on his salary and role, but I think when things are bad, he's just become the one to blame sometimes cause every one else is doing it.
I'm trying to give Willy a fair shake here, many others are too, but many have made up their minds and won't revert back no matter what happens.
He should throw some hits, he has to do it.
